The final hurdle

Registering one's "temporary" residence with the "local" police station shouldn't be that hard.  Particularly with the assistance of a friendly and cooperative landlord.   Unfortunately, the friendly and cooperative landlord wasn't free to help me with that until today, and we are really supposed to get it done within 24 hours.  One hears occasional dire stories of local coppers trying to extort on-the-spot fines of 500 rmb per day for "late" registration.  However, that's usually in cases of people being severely late.  Since I only finished moving into my new place over the weekend (and since the copper on the registration desk is probably just going to assume that my new lease started on 1st December rather than six days ago), I didn't think that would be too much of a problem.   Then, just yesterday, a friend told me an alarming tale of being hauled over the coals the last time she re-registered her residence because the coppers seemed suspicious of her visa.  And well they might be, because, let's face it, we're nearly all of us on "fake" visas (provided via companies that sell their allocated quota of foreigner work permit applications without actually asking us to work for them) - that's the only straightforward way to get a visa to stay long-term in China.  And the cops must surely know that.   I was trying to remain chipper in the face of this news, convincing myself that it was an isolated instance, or that my friend had got herself into trouble by being able to speak decent Chinese (if you just smile dumbly at them, they generally get on with their paper-filling-out chores and don't bother you with awkward questions about what kind of work you actually do).  In five years at my old place, the once or twice-a-year ritual of registration renewal was always the smoothest of formalities, never taking more than a few minutes nor involving any more than noting down my passport and visa numbers and my home address (well, the first few times, the reluctance of my unfriendly and unhelpful former landlord to accompany me to the cop shop led to some problems - I think eventually I had to confirm his identity from the mugshots on their local records [yep, they have photographs of everyone] and get him on the phone to explain why he was being so derelict in his landlordly duty; he played ball after that).  Nevertheless, I contacted my visa agent last night, asking her to urgently send me all the relevant information about the company by which I am nominally employed.   She said she'd get back to me.... but she didn't.  I wasn't overly bothered by it.  I know she's very busy, and I didn't want to hassle her.  Everything, I was sure, would be all right.   So, it was a bit embarrassing when they asked me for my office phone number, and I couldn't give it to them.   I hid behind the language barrier.  I speak very little Chinese, and usually pretend to speak absolutely none.  My new landlord speaks very, very little English.  None of the folks at the police station spoke any English at all.   I excused myself to make a panicky call to my visa agent.   She was reluctant to provide the information I needed to get me off the hook because she was worried it might cause trouble for the company who had kindly sold me the work permit.  Indeed, she seemed to be in a greater panic than me, perhaps foreseeing the unravelling of her whole business.  She seemed convinced that I must have broken the law - or at least done something to piss this particular copper off - for them to be asking such probing questions.  She had to check with the company first, to get their permission to reveal their business telephone number.  I stalled for time some more with the cops.  At least the agent got back to me fairly promptly.  Alas, the phone number was not, after all, enough.  Now, they also wanted the full business name of the company and my official job title.  In Chinese.  I knew in English, but the Chinese was beyond me, and I wasn't able to get it across to my landlord.  I tried calling my agent back several times, but she was busy on other calls.  In desperation, I started calling former students to try to find one of them who could 'translate'.  None of them were answering either.   Eventually, the agent checked her 'missed calls' and got back to me, and the problem was solved within seconds.  There was no further interrogation as to the exact nature of my business, the office address, the name of my boss - thank heavens.   I got the impression that it was just a formality - that they've recently added employer contact details to the database fields (perhaps not even 'compulsory', but some officers are more thorough than others about filling in all the blanks).  They weren't suspicious about, or even interested in, my working status, and weren't going to do any checks with the employer.  All a storm-in-a-teacup.   But that was a half-hour that probably took another five years off my life.  Our situation in this country is terrifyingly precarious at times.